ITPAS - Badgers

UPDATE MAY 2007 - You can sign a petition against the government proposals to sanction a Badger Cull. You may be interested to know that there are no known cases of Badgers on The Wirral, of ever having been tested positive for Bovine TB in the past 27 years!! (source: Lesley Brockbank, Wirral & Cheshire Badger Group).

ITPAS held an open meeting on the evening of Wednesday 20th September 2006, where Lesley Brockbank gave a most interesting talk about our elusive black and white striped friends.

At our request, particular emphasis was placed on a proposed Government authorised cull, with many facts and figures to aid the argument against such widespread slaughter. Lesley also encouraged us all to write individual letters to relevant persons in authority in order to assist the argument 'against'. PLEASE DO SO AS A MATTER OF URGENCY - to assist, we have published the below information provided to us by Lesley:-

DEFRA Ministers:-

1) David Miliband
The new Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
2) Lord Rooker
The new Food and Farming Minister - was a junior MAFF minister from 1997-99 and has knowledge of badgers/bTB argument.
3) Ben Bradshaw MP
Minister for Local Environment, Marine and Animal Welfare - still in the hot seat on badgers/bTB.

ALL AT:-
Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs / DEFRA
Nobel House
17 Smith Square
London SW1P 3JR

Your MP:
House of Commons
Westminster
London SW1A 0AA

MPs generally accept that each letter they receive represents the views of about 200 constituents, so don’t think that writing will be a waste of time. Even if you don’t normally write a letter, please make an exception on this occasion. Unless we can persuade the government to pursue measures which actually resolve rather than exacerbate the problem of bovine TB, thousands more badgers (and cattle) will die needlessly.

The websites listed below also have information about the proposed badger ‘cull’.

Although there is a mass of detail, remember that the main points are clear:

1) TB in cattle was originally brought under control by compulsory testing of cattle from 1960 onwards -- without killing a single badger. (Nobody thought of that until the 1970s.)

2) The recent rise started when cattle TB controls were relaxed, due to the chaos of BSE/Mad Cow Disease (started 1986, peaked 1993) and Foot and Mouth (2001). There is no coherent badger-related explanation for this steep rise.

3) In 35 years of research, it has never been proved that wild badgers pass TB to cattle. It is just as likely (or more so) that cattle give the disease to badgers, when badgers root under cowpats for grubs and worms.

4) The government’s own scientists have advised against a badger ‘cull’.

5) The repeated re-emergence of TB in ‘closed herds’ is down to imperfect tests -- highly infectious late-stage cases are missed by the skin test, and an alternative is not widely available.

6) As of the first half of 2006, TB figures are falling, following zero tolerance on overdue cattle TB tests.

Links:
http://www.badger.org.uk/tb/index.html (Badger Trust)

http://www.rspca.org.uk (RSPCA)

Wildlife Trust environment:agriculture:campaigns

http://www.stopwaronbadgers.org

http://www.nfuonline.com/x5158.xml (National Farmers’ Union)

http://www.defra.gov.uk (Dept for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs)

Click Here

To read our latest article (January 2008)

Click Here

To See a video of Badgers in their Sett